Librarian Has To Pay Fee for Being a Proud Father

Parental pride has had a significant cost for a Brooklyn high school librarian. Robert Grandt was charged a $500 fee as a punishment for promoting his daughter's graphic novel on the job.

Grandt says he only meant to show how proud he was by highlighting his daughter's first book, an adaptation of "Macbeth" that she co-illustrated. Grandt promoted the book in a newsletter he distributes as a librarian at Brooklyn Technical High School [my son's alma mater] and gave out free copies.

Comments

she might become an artist and you would be seen as promoting her business...

wow. you know how many boxes of Girl Scout cookies I can't buy anymore? or chocolate bars? because they might benefit some coworkers kid. in fact, I need to turn her in for trying to use her position to benefit her child.

[raises fist to the sky] damn you, Girl Scouts! for getting a good person fired.

I think it's outrageous. I know this school well, it has a wonderful reputation as one of the top public high schools in the country (deserved? maybe a while back...) and yet it is sorely lacking in good administrators.

The previous principal, Lee McCaskill resigned in disgrace in 2006 (press release from the UFT) and there still remains an aura of suspicion, racial tension and 'politics as usual' at the school. It's a shame for a distinguished institution such as this to suffer through this kind of bad PR.

Don't know which assistant principal started this ball rolling, but it is/was a huge waste of time and energy to penalize a trusted long-term employee who clearly was only showing his heart on his sleeve. The library program would have been so much better off if the school board spent the energy putting more books/computers/study aids in the library instead of making a show out of the poor librarian who only wanted to demonstrate his pride in his daughter's work.

If any organization needs a teacher's union, it is this one. Such silly abuses of management are similar to a Dilbert cartoon, and this librarian needed a better choice than hire his own lawyer to fight for his rights.

And the school management needs somerthing better to do than strain after gnats in the library.